Cutting for Stone
by Abraham Verghese
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Book Summary Information
Author: Abraham VergheseEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2010-01-26
ISBN: 0375714367
Number of pages: 667
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of Cutting for Stone
Book Review: Emotional story well told with great characters
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a long emotional beautifully written novel with characters you can't forget. It's beautifully plotted - well, maybe too well plotted because the ending is almost potboiler gooey - and the action takes place in two hospitals in two countries - Missing (for Mission) in Addis Ababa and Our Lady of Perpetual Help in the ghetto of New York City. It's written by an Indian doctor who was raised in Ethiopia, schooled in Madras, turned internist and academician in the US then turned writer out of the Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa and is now a tenured Professor of The Theory and Practice of Medicine at Stanford'
If I were to sum up my reaction to this book I would just say that it's a novel with good people in it - and that's a relief these days; it's a novel all the more interesting to us because of the colorful back-drop of Ethiopia in the first two thirds of the book; it's a novel with a bit too much surgical detail for me - a lot of OR description - and I still don't know whether the operating surgeon stands on the right or the left of the table. (What do you with a left-handed surgeon?) And it's a novel, which presents us with the problems of a foreign doctor, (particularly one with a dark skin) entering practice in America: Are they entitled to compete on the same level for the same choice residencies at the same choice hospitals as our domestic graduates? Coming from a different culture can they apply what they have learned medically with the same sensitivity and skill as a graduate of, say, the University of Kansas Medical School?
I'll review it by telling you about the characters because in the end it's mostly about people. No big moral or political issues
Sisteer Mary Joseph Praise - a Carmel;ite nun from India posted to Missing Hospital. It's 1954. Working there as assistant to Thomas Stone. Very religious.. Becomes pregnant byh one time incident with Stone. Conceals the pregnancy under her sari and when found delivering identical twins is rushed to operating room and dies in complicated delivery by Stone.
Thomas Stone - a young. brilliant, Indian trained English surgeon who is so overwrought with the death of the woman he loved because of his bumbling delivery of his twins he rushes form the operating room and is not seen again on the pages of this book - or anywhere else for that matter - till thirty years later when he appears in the operating room of Our Lady hospital in New York as his son Marion is assisting another surgeon in a complicated liver repair. He's now the leading liver surgeon in the world and practicing in a Mayflower hospital in Boston.
Thomas Stone, - Young and brilliant English surgeon. Raised in and trained in India. Father of the twins. Becomes so distraught at the botched delivery he vanishes and doesn't come back to the story till thirty years later when he's found to be the leading liver surgeon in the world, practicing in Boston Hospital.
Marion Stone/Shiva Stone. Identical twin conjoined lightly at the top of the head at birth and separated in the delivery room. Some trouble (?) in detaching Shiva's head may have lead to his death thirty years later from an arteriovenous malfunction caused by blood thinner and which flooded his brain and left him brain dead within a mater of hours - in Our Lady Hospital in NYC.
Marion Praise Stone. The other twin and the narrator of this novel from page one to the end at page 651.
Both Marion and Shiva are raised by Ghost and Hema (see below) at the Hospital in Ethiopia. Lovely scenes of Ethiopia. A warm family feeling at the hospital with many retainers and helpers. Both are close in boyhood with Genet (see below) but drift apart over Genet as adolescents. Marion goes to medical school. Shiva goes only part way but is the brighter. Marion becomes a general surgeon and gets an internship at Our Lady in NYC.
Our Lady of Perpetual Help - it's the "Ellis Island" for young doctors from India, Africa. They can't get jobs in the "Mayflower " hospitals. But it's the place to learn because it's in the ghetto and gets the real problem cases twenty-four hours a day. Exhausting. No sleep. But you learn. (Vershage knows because he was one of them,)
Ghosh. One of the loveliest characters in the book. Indian. Internist. Stationed at Missing. As the Sister Mary Joseph Praise tragedy opens the book he is forced to become a surgeon because Thomas Stone has disappeared and the hospital has no one else to turn to. Marries Hema. (See below) Becomes father to the twins for all intents and purposes. A truly loving man and great doctor.
Hema. An Indian trained OB-GYN specialist at Missing who doesn't get into the operating room in time to save the Sister Mary Joseph Praise situation but delivers the twins successfully. Another lovely character andtruly good person. Marries Ghosh. Raises the twins as her own for thirty years as their real mother for all intents and purposes. Otherwise no children of her own.
Genet. Beautiful daughter of Rosina a retainer at Missing. Same age as the twins. The three of them grow up together in Ethiopia at the hospital. All one family. However she's a tragic figure and the deus ex machina of the tragedy which ends this novel.(As a matter of fact she's such a tragic figure that she's grist for an independent novel about her alone.)
To make a very long story really short this is what happens - all told in superb prose:. There is an idyllic period while the three children grow up and go to school together. Marion loves Genet. They go to medical school together but drift apart. Genet is ready for love and allows Shiva to make love to her unbeknownst to Marion. Now it's the old triangle situation except Marion doesn't learn the truth for some time. .Learning that her daughter has been deflowered Rosina forces Genet into female circumcision. Genet flees and becomes one of the Ethiopian rebels. She is one of four who hijack an Ethiopain Airlines plane during the civil war. She's now a refugee and wanted person and all of her friends are suspect and subject to arrest by the secret police. (This is a Communist state.) Of course, one of her friends is or was Marion Stone and they set out to arrest him. He is warned of the pending incarceration and flees; and in one of the great escape chapters gets out of the country and to America to Our lady hospital where the rest of the story takes place - at about page 400. Shiva remains in Ethiopia and is interested in the treatment and prevention of vaginal fistulas in women, so prevalent in a society which has poor obstetrical and genealogical services.
In America Marion completes his internship and his residency and is now, years later, a Board Qualified General Surgeon. He practices at Our Lady still. One day, anxious for Ethiopian food, he's told about the Queen of Sheba restaurant in NYC - best Ethiopian restaurant in America. Goes there. Finds it's run by Tsegue who he has helped in Addis Ababa years before. She reunites with him and tells him Genet is now in NYC. They find each other. Genet has had a rough life. Finally he makes love to her. But he gets Hepatitis B from her and is at death's door..
Now Marion is dying from liver failure but Shiva comes to America and suggests transplanting a portion of his liver into Marion. Should work because of identical twins. But no one has ever done it before. Call in Thomas Stone the greatest liver surgeon in the world and father of his twins. He does it successfully the first ever living donor liver surgery of its kind. Marion recovers. Shiva dies from the brain bleed. In the meantime Genet has died. in prison - dregs etc.
So as the curtain comes down on this drama there are really only three people left alive - Marion, Thomas and Hema who has lost her husband (Ghosh died some years ago) she has lost one of her "children" (Shiva) but she still has Marion. Everyone else we were close to is dead.
But there is more. Remember I told you it was gooey? Now there is peaceful music. Marion goes back to Missing where he remains as the surgeon. Hema is with him. She's interested in Shiva's program for the eradication and/or proper treatment of vaginal fistulas in African women. And now the program is well funded. Thomas Stone is retired with his reputation intact. Our Lady is famous for the first liver operation of it/s kind and all is well at Missing.
Great novel. Great characters. Lots of plot. Long. But worth it. Please read it. You'll like it.
Summary of Cutting for Stone
Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon. Orphaned by their mother?s death and their father?s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution.Moving from Addis Ababa to New York City and back again, Cutting for Stone is an unforgettable story of love and betrayal, medicine and ordinary miracles--and two brothers whose fates are forever intertwined.
Amazon Exclusive: John Irving Reviews Cutting for Stone
John Irving has been nominated for a National Book Award three times--winning once, in 1980, for the novel The World According to Garp. In 1992, Irving was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. In 2000, he won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules--a film with seven Academy Award nominations. Read his exclusive Amazon guest review of Cutting for Stone:
That Abraham Verghese is a doctor and a writer is already established; the miracle of this novel is how organically the two are entwined. I?ve not read a novel wherein medicine, the practice of it, is made as germane to the storytelling process, to the overall narrative, as the author manages to make it happen here. The medical detail is stunning, but it never overwhelms the humane and narrative aspects of this moving and ambitious novel. This is a first-person narration where the first-person voice appears to disappear, but never entirely; only in the beginning are we aware that the voice addressing us is speaking from the womb! And what terrific characters--even the most minor players are given a full history. There is also a sense of great foreboding; by the midpoint of the story, one dreads what will further befall these characters. The foreshadowing is present in the chapter titles, too--?The School of Suffering? not least among them! Cutting for Stone is a remarkable achievement.--John Irving
(Photo © Maki Galimberti)
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